The word “tolerance” is often spoken as if it were a shining virtue, something close to divine love. In public debates, on university campuses, and in the speeches of international organizations, it is praised as if human society could only flourish once everyone learns to embrace difference without limit. Diversity, inclusion, and equality are held up as the path to peace. In practice, however, the more loudly people preach tolerance, the more fractured and suspicious our societies appear to become. The contradiction is too obvious to ignore.
The reason lies in a misunderstanding. Tolerance was never meant to be an ideal of perfect love, where one admires or celebrates every human being without condition. That is impossible for finite and flawed creatures. Even the most generous among us form attachments and aversions. We are drawn to some people and ideas while we recoil from others. Tolerance is not about erasing these differences, but about learning how to live with them. It is not a sentimental feeling but a discipline that restrains the urge to exclude, punish, or destroy what we dislike.
The Japanese theologian and historian of ideas, Dr. Anri Morimoto, has helped recover this hard truth in his book Intolerance. By shifting the frame away from tolerance as an ideal and toward intolerance as the reality, he reveals the roots of this concept in the painful history of Europe and America. Tolerance was born as a civic necessity, not a utopian dream. Rediscovering that perspective is urgent today, not only for debates around diversity and inclusion, but also for the everyday struggles of family life, friendship, and professional relationships.
A Misunderstood Virtue
Tolerance is often confused with love. When religious or political leaders urge people to love their enemies, they are speaking of an ideal that transcends normal human capacity. Love in this sense is divine, radical, and transformative. It asks the impossible. Tolerance, however, is a civic practice. It does not require affection, admiration, or celebration. It requires restraint. To tolerate someone is to accept their presence, even when you find their views or lifestyle offensive, and to stop short of silencing or persecuting them.
Once this distinction is clear, the myth of pure tolerance becomes visible. No one can be tolerant in the abstract toward everyone. Tolerance only makes sense in the presence of conflict and dislike. To say you tolerate what you already enjoy is meaningless. The very word implies a burden, something endured. Tolerance presupposes intolerance, because without dislike there is nothing to tolerate. It is not a virtue that floats above human emotions, but a discipline born from struggle.
The common call for one hundred percent tolerance, where every voice is welcomed and every identity is celebrated, collapses under its own weight. Not only is it impossible, it also hides hypocrisy. Those who claim to have achieved such limitless acceptance often reveal their own intolerance when challenged. They cancel, exclude, or condemn those they judge intolerant. In doing so, they repeat the same cycle of exclusion they thought they had transcended.
The Historical Roots of Real Tolerance
The concept of tolerance grew out of Europe’s darkest conflicts. In the wake of religious wars, communities could not survive if every doctrinal disagreement led to persecution. People discovered that living together did not mean dissolving their differences but restraining their impulses to violence. Tolerance in this sense was less about harmony and more about survival. It recognized that society would never be uniform, and so it required rules to prevent destruction.
The early American colonies provide an especially vivid illustration. Roger Williams, a devout Puritan expelled from Massachusetts, insisted that true religious freedom could only exist if the state refrained from enforcing religious uniformity. His vision was not sentimental. He did not love every sect equally, nor did he agree with their teachings. What he built in Rhode Island was a society where deeply opposed religious groups could live beside each other without coercion. Tolerance here was not a celebration of difference but an agreement to refrain from persecution.
This practical arrangement was fragile and contested, but it laid the groundwork for a wider principle. Tolerance was never the absence of dislike. It was the civic mechanism by which flawed people limited their destructive impulses. Williams himself disliked many groups, including Catholics and Quakers, yet he defended their right to exist. His realism remains instructive. It shows us that tolerance has never meant loving everyone. It meant protecting space for those one does not love.
The Problem of Elite Tolerance
In today’s world, much of the rhetoric about tolerance comes from elites who speak from comfortable positions. Universities host diversity conferences. Corporations hold inclusion training sessions. International organizations issue lofty statements. All of this has value, but it is often detached from the lived friction of communities where conflict is daily and raw. The tolerance preached from above is cheap. It costs nothing because it demands no sacrifice.
This comfort can mask indifference. People who never encounter deep differences in their own lives can claim to love everyone equally, when in fact they simply do not feel the strain. For them, diversity is a concept, not a neighbor. The result is self-deception. Believing themselves tolerant, they fail to recognize how intolerant they become when pressed. The same universities and organizations that preach inclusion often exclude or silence dissenting voices. They practice intolerance in the name of tolerance.
Cancel culture is a dramatic expression of this pattern. When someone expresses an unpopular opinion, the call is not to tolerate their presence but to erase them from public life. This is the opposite of tolerance. It is the reappearance of persecution, dressed in the language of inclusion. Morimoto’s analysis reveals the irony. Those who imagine themselves most tolerant may, in practice, enforce conformity with the harshest measures.
Reframing Tolerance Today
If we are to recover the true meaning of tolerance, we must set aside the myth of pure harmony. Tolerance does not mean liking or admiring difference. It means showing respect where affection is absent. Respect here does not mean approval. It means recognition of the other’s right to exist, speak, and participate. To tolerate someone is to restrain the impulse to silence or exclude them. It is a civic virtue, not an emotional one.
This reframing makes tolerance both more modest and more sustainable. It does not demand that we feel affection for everyone. It asks that we discipline our behavior. It asks that we allow people we dislike to remain in our society, to vote, to speak, and to live. This is not easy, but it is possible. It is a matter of civic structure and personal discipline, not sentimental emotion.
In this light, tolerance should be seen as a discipline, not a sentiment. It requires boundaries, laws, and practices that embody restraint. Free speech is one such practice, where unpopular voices are allowed to exist without being silenced. Religious freedom is another, where groups are allowed to worship according to their conscience without state interference. These are not celebrations of difference but protections against persecution. They represent the discipline of tolerance in action.
Everyday Applications
The need for true tolerance is not confined to politics or international relations. It touches daily life in the most ordinary settings. In the workplace, colleagues often hold sharply different values and worldviews. Tolerance does not mean pretending to admire what you find wrong. It means working professionally with respect, refraining from sabotage or exclusion, and allowing the other to remain part of the team.
In family life, differences often emerge across generations. A parent may dislike a child’s lifestyle choices. A child may reject the traditions of their parents. Tolerance here does not mean celebrating what one finds troubling. It means continuing to show respect, refraining from cutting off ties, and allowing space for disagreement. The same applies in marriage, where partners may never resolve certain conflicts. Tolerance sustains the relationship not by erasing difference but by restraining the impulse to dominate or reject.
Friendships too are tested by political and cultural divides. In recent years, many friendships have fractured over ideological differences. Tolerance means resisting the urge to abandon every friend who disagrees. It means preserving relationship where possible, recognizing that disagreement is not annihilation. In this sense, tolerance is the practice of maintaining human ties across the lines of dislike.
Lessons for DEI and Our Times
The modern movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion carries valuable insights. It rightly recognizes the need for fairness and dignity. It aims to correct systemic exclusion and to open opportunities for those historically marginalized. At its best, it insists that societies cannot thrive if people are silenced or erased because of who they are. These aspirations reflect the civic spirit of tolerance in important ways.
Yet DEI also risks falling into the myth of harmony. It often speaks of celebrating diversity as if affection for every difference were both possible and necessary. This sets up expectations that collapse under real conflict. When faced with deep divisions, the temptation becomes exclusion of the “intolerant,” which replicates the very problem it aimed to solve. In this way, DEI can become another form of intolerance disguised as inclusion.
A more mature vision of inclusion would learn from the older, realistic notion of tolerance. It would recognize that differences are enduring. It would stop expecting universal love and instead build institutions that endure conflict. It would hold respect as the baseline and allow love to remain a gift rather than a duty. This reframing would make inclusion more resilient, because it would not shatter when dislike appears. It would protect society from the cycle of condemnation and cancellation.
The Civic Beauty of Restraint
Tolerance is often praised as if it were an emotional virtue, a matter of affection. In reality, it is a civic discipline. It recognizes that we are sinful and imperfect, and that we will always dislike and distrust certain people. The real achievement is not to eliminate these feelings but to restrain their destructive power. This restraint allows us to live together despite conflict. It keeps civil society intact.
This perspective matters now more than ever. Our world is fractured by polarization, division, and suspicion. The rhetoric of tolerance, when confused with pure love, only deepens the disappointment. By recovering tolerance as restraint, we regain a practice that can actually hold societies together. We stop blaming ourselves and others for failing to achieve the impossible. We focus instead on the possible: respect, discipline, and the courage to live with difference.
In this sense, tolerance is not glamorous. It does not promise harmony or perfect equality. It promises survival, coexistence, and the fragile beauty of civil peace. That may not be the vision of heaven, but it is the discipline that allows us to live together on earth.
Image by Pete Linforth
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